I have been thinking about the origins of parrot clipping and realized that it is a practice carried over from wild caught parrots. Now that I think of it this way, it makes a lot more sense to me now. Perhaps the whole “crashing into windows,” “flying into walls,” and “being a danger to itself” from flying issues really stemmed from wild caught parrots being brought into captive situations. They had never seen a window, walls, etc and would try to fly as they did in the wild so these naturally became threats. Furthermore, having been wild caught they would obviously want to have nothing to do with humans and always try to fly away so clipping was almost unavoidable in order to suppress the instinctual flight response. Naturally these wild parrots would be super scared of humans and always try to get away so taming may have otherwise been impossible (I am speculating as I have never worked with a wild caught but from things I've read it seems likely).
Many “reputable” stores and breeders were originally established on the wild parrot business but moved more over to the breeding/weening since the ban. They maintain the initial school of thought that parrots must be clipped for their own safety and taming. You see, I've been thinking for a while now that there's something fishy about all the books and stores being incredibly anti-flight but under this hypothesis I think it makes more sense. These people learned about parrot handling on wild caught parrots and that was the way of dealing with them. Even if the books have been written since the ban, many of them are just newer editions or written by those same people so I think that archaic wild caught school of thought persists. I think this is why when I speak to old time bird store employees they think I'm crazy for having a flighted parrot. On the other side I had trouble understanding why they were so anti-flight but I think it is because they have not experienced flying hand fed babies.
I think many other people with hand fed parrots are coming to similar conclusions that we've been lied to about the evils of flight and that it really isn't so impossible to keep a flighted parrot. You see hand feeding isn't a lifetime guarantee of tameness but is rather a window of opportunity to be able to handle and teach the bird about our way of life early on and create routines. It is probable that it would be impossible to get close to a new flighted wild caught without it dashing away no matter what (and probably crashing into something in panic). But with the handfed babies, we have the opportunity to handle and flight train them while they are young. They learn much quicker about walls and windows and don't get too hurt if they hit them in the process.
So I am beginning to suspect that the strongly pro-clipping mindset actually stems from wild caughts and this is why it often seems to lack sense to me on our new hand fed parrots. I often find current reasons for clipping to be more so excuses than absolutely legitimate reasons (although there definitely are some). As we've analyzed in other topics, many of the same risks actually apply to clipped parrots only perhaps in varying degrees. Concerns about handle-ability and independence are solved through good training and even a clipped parrot if poorly handled will not maintain tameness either. On a case by case basis I realize that people may be unable to keep flighted parrots and it is ultimately their decision alone. However, the broadly accepted concept of clipping parrots has seemed bizarre to me, especially since one by one I've been disproving many of the misconceptions about flighted parrots for myself. Now that I've given thought to clipping keeping the old wild caught concept in mind, I think I can make more sense of the origins of the practice and reasoning. Some people still have wild caught or very old parrots to which our newer concepts may be difficult or impossible to apply. Other people are being misled by old-school books, stores, and breeders. However, for the purpose of discussion, I would like to propose that the concept of clipping newly acquired domestically hand raised baby parrots is becoming obsolete.